I was talking to a mate about comic shops and it was a trip down memory lane. As it turned out we were going to the same shops So as it got me thinking about a lot of things but mostly about my father who passed away in 2008.
So lets start at the beginning. I have been going to the Forbidden Planet and GOSH! since i was a young child. It's a shop in Central London so it was a journey to go to so i was only taken there as a treat for my birthday. If i was not taken there then I was taken to the comic shop in Harrow. Calamity Comics was always a special place for me as it was nearer than the Forbidden Planet so i could be taken there more often. It help that at the time my aunt lived in Harrow so i had more opportunities to go. Just a few shops down the road was also a model shop. I got many Star Trek and Star Wars models from there.
Now jump forward to the early 1990's and one night my father said he took a different route home and he saw a comic shop in Northfields just outside of Northfields Station. I can not remember the name of it. It was just short bus ride away so very Saturday or very other Saturday he would take me. It was here where i started to collect Star Wars comics i got the Dark Empire and Star Wars Classic comics from there.
At around the same time he found another shop in Hayes. Now i can not for the life of me remember the name of the shop but we just referred to it as Hayes Comics Shop. between these two shops i was able to get most of the back issues and all the new ones that were came out. About a year after we started going to the Northfields shop it closed down and it was sad but there was still the Hayes store. After the store closed and we were left with the store in Hayes we started to go very week. It was local and i spent many hours reading comics while my father would stand around talking to the owner of the shop about comic movies and all that other stuff. Then one day we found out a new comic shop was opening up in Northfields. A new comic shop and its back in Northfields that's great news or so we thought....
The store opened and it was called Blue Silver. I remember going and they had a good selection of back issues and new ones. But something was not right and i was not the only one to notice. Then one time time i was picking up a few back issues and then went to pick up a new issue of something i can't remember what but my father stoped me and said i should only get the back issues and we will get the new ones from Hayes. Then i looked at the prices on the new issues. They were more expensive than the ones in Hayes. Now when i was told this and i started looking i realized that a lot of the prices were marked up higher than you would of expect. But The two guys that ran Blue Silver did do Something right. They put together The first comic mart or convention thing in Ealing Broadway. This was awesome as i had been going to the London Comic Mart at the TUC ( Trade Union Center ) for a few years and the idea of have a mart local to us was great. It was at Ealing Town Hall and it was great lots and lots of comics, figures and trading cards. But sadly it was a one off. A few weeks later my father was was talking to the guy in the Hayes comic shop and the topic of Blue Silver came up. Both my father and the owner of the Hayes store really did not like the Blue Silver store and the guys running. All this didn't matter in the end as the store closed a few years later.
All was not lost while i was at university I found other comic stores in the near veracity. There was Epic Heroes in Edgware and in Richmond there was They Walk Among Us. Later it changed it's name to Ace Comics. Epic Heroes was very cool it had a lot of import figures and i got my first Macross figures from there. Now that was an epic birthday.... but a story for another time. Epic Heroes sadly closed a few years ago and I've not been to Ace Comics in a good while. I might take a trip after work one day...
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